Noveau Monde
by Ryuujitsu
Summary: Noa had known the deep blue of the ocean would haunt him to his dying day. He went under with a gasp and the ocean was all around, dark blue and oppressive. Amane x Noa, Bday gift for Bourei no Hikari.


nouveau monde  
yuugiou fanfiction  
ryuujitsu & co.

Disclaimer: Saying we own Yuugiou is like saying Toshi's cheekbones are smaller than Mt. Everest. They're not.

A/N: _Nellshipping, vaguely AU and drabble-ish. A li'l morbid as well. I don't know my geography and I'm afraid I was too lazy to research beaches in Japan, so this shall be an Unnamed Beach. Birthday present for Bourei no Hikari, since I couldn't get Faust8 up in time. Happy Birthday, Kat!_

-

It was a Wednesday afternoon at the shore and the beach was almost empty despite the amazing weather—gorgeous blue skies and a huge bronze disc of a sun, with a cool breeze blowing in from across the ocean. This was one of the more exclusive luxury beach resorts and usually you needed a reservation to have access to the tiniest grain of sand, but when your father is Gozaburo Kaiba exceptions can be made. It was a two-week trip, a break from school and cram school, a little treat for the boy who had been declared top in his class now for five years running. Gozaburo Kaiba was not attending, but he had wanted the beach emptied out for his son's celebration—and when your father is Gozaburo Kaiba, there can be nothing that you could want or need. The stretch of sand was unpopulated but for a concentrated knot of families, clustered some twenty or thirty meters away from the Kaiba entourage of body guards, tutors, maids—and the mother of the boy, who lounged under a beach umbrella.

She was a common beauty whose fresh and pretty looks were starting to dry out, the trophy bride sort who loved her son but always seemed to carry some kind of resentment against him—bearing the child had fleshed out her slender body, and thank goodness that Gozaburo Kaiba was not a man to have distractions like mistresses or she would have been finished.

Standing in waves that buffeted his knees and ground rough sand against his legs, Noa realized that he might be afraid of the ocean.

It had been timid at first, lapping at his sandy feet like the wet tongue of a small, tired dog, but then as the tide receded the waves began crashing like angry things, snatching from the shore the pebbles and bits of shell—each wave like a roaring beast retreating into the sea, taking its treasures with it. With each rush of water leaving shore Noa thought he would be pulled in. He had seen a conch shell lying under the water and it had lured him far down the beach, into water that was thigh-high, cold and murky. The wave slammed into shore and broke around his body, knocking him back, and before he could recover himself it was tearing back to the ocean again, dragging his small prepubescent body with it.

Even as a small child Noa had known that, somehow, the deep blue of the ocean would continue to haunt him until his dying day. He went under with a gasp that drew a froth of air and seawater into his lungs, and reflexively he clapped his hands over his mouth and nose to keep from coughing and inhaling more water. The sand was still beneath his feet but the ocean was all around, dark blue and oppressive. He flailed, lost his footing and the water watched him with impassive eyes—

_Icy blue eyes—_

A hand grabbed his wrist, an arm went around his waist. He was hauled to the surface and propped against a hip. Expecting to see one of his father's men standing there, he turned instead and his chin went directly into the soft flesh of a woman's breast.

"Mother?" he gargled, saltwater dribbling from his mouth.

Beyond his rescuer's arm, there was a boy watching him—a strange boy with hair so blonde it shone white in the sun—or perhaps the hair was white and it was the sun that was casting the yellow tones—a boy with clear green eyes like two chips of frosted glass. He was standing knee-deep in the water, looking to be seven or eight, but instead of swimming trunks he was covered head to foot in clothing, and he was now wet. His eyes had never left Noa—or rather, the woman who was holding Noa.

And she was not a woman at all. Despite the swelling of her chest her hips were sharp and adolescent, slim enough that they had confused Noa into thinking she was a body guard. Her eyes were warm earth-purple and just starting to glow with teenage arrogance—and instantly, though the two were so different in appearance, and though this girl's hair was a peppery sort of brown and not white at all, Noa knew that his rescuer and the strange boy must be siblings, for they had the same almond shape of the eyes, the same slant-posture.

"Are you alright?" she asked. She had made no move to return to shore; instead, she stood there as the waves boomed around them, holding him to her. "Are you alright, gaki?"

"I'm not a child," said Noa stiffly as he recovered. "I am thirteen years old." Feeling humiliated now that he had been saved by a girl not much older than himself, he turned and snapped at the strange boy who was still staring, "Stop looking at me!"

"I see your ghost," said the boy very quietly. His voice was hollow and seemed to have come from a long way off. Then he looked away.

The girl laughed somewhat nervously and shifted Noa so that he was leaning against her left hip now. "Don't talk like that," she said to her brother. "You're going to scare him. Ryou?"

The strange boy said nothing.

"Who are you?" demanded Noa. "My father rented out this part of the beach today for me. No one else is supposed to be here. You aren't supposed to be here."

She looked down at him and smiled in a crooked way. "If I wasn't here, gaki, you would have been drowned. So be thankful that the hotel staff didn't kick us all out. You think it's nice to have a whole beach to yourself? You selfish brat." She spoke in a detached way, but her words were very whole and firm.

"Let's get out of the water, oneesan," said the strange boy named Ryou.

She didn't look at her brother. "You go," she said, wading back to the hard wet sand at the edge of the waves and setting Noa down. "I'm going to go swimming."

She began moving down to the water. Noa watched her narrow hips shifting and moving beneath her yellow suit. He felt the strange boy take hold of the back of his swim trunks. "Stop looking at her," said Ryou. "Amane is not yours to look at. The spirits have claimed her. And she is too old for you. She's sixteen today."

Noa hit the strange boy's hand and watched with satisfaction as the boy recoiled, blinking his glassy eyes. "Don't you touch me, you freak," said Noa, turning back just in time to see Amane dive under the waves, back arched, toes locked and pointed.

She was not afraid of the water.

-

"I don't like sand," said Amane matter-of-factly, hours later as she stood with the ocean up to her ankles with dusk tangling in her hair. "It gets everywhere."

Noa looked at her in her yellow suit with her strong, newly-tanned face and her long brown hair, made ropy and salty by the sea. Light was fading fast; in the darkness the blue of the sea had gone to black. He could see the moon painted in swatches of white across the water, which had quieted since noon. The tide was still coming in, drowning exposed shells and rocks beneath the water once again. His father's men were asleep inside their hotel rooms.

"Your brother," said Noa with the sometimes embarrassing bravado of a child, "what's wrong with him?"

Amane looked suddenly fierce. She came up out of the water and towered over him even though she was only a slip of a girl and they were both rather wispy children growing to be willowy adults. "Nothing's wrong with my brother. Ryou sees things that no on else can see. He knows things."

Noa turned to the sea and thought of the eyes that had, for a brief moment, electrified his body with fear earlier that day. _Ice blue eyes—_

"I suppose you're going to say he really can see ghosts."

She wrapped a sandy towel around her body. "Not ghosts. He means the span of your lifetime. Your fate. He knows mine." She looked towards the ocean, jerking her fingers through the stringy wet masses of her hair. "Today he saw yours."

Noa took a quick shivery breath. He had never been strong in body—premature birth—_No, I want to live. . ._ "I am the son of Gozaburo Kaiba," he said faintly. "My father will not abandon me to—"

"I will be dying soon," she told him, carelessly. "You, too. But perhaps not as soon as me."

"Are you afraid?" said Noa. He wasn't sure what had made him accept the impossible so completely—how could she believe her freak brother's lies?—but Bakura Amane was so unlike her brother, so solid and unyielding and normal. He wanted to ask, "How will I die? Will it hurt? Can we stop it?" and in his mind there was a whisper _I will not die!_

She scowled. "I don't want it to hurt. Ryou only knows when. He doesn't know how. He knew when Mother was going to die."

_You will die forgotten and unloved by the father who a year ago would have given you anything as long as you were brilliant and your mother with her pretty rotting face will be dead soon after you and your father will follow because your father has no soul anymore after you have gone _

Her eyes were pitch-purple. "When we're dead, let's find each other, okay, gaki?"

He let her kiss his forehead and his cheek and felt her lips soft at the corner of his mouth. Then she was standing and moving back out into the water, her hair thick and powdery brown down her back.

-

When Kaiba Noa saw the other boy's eyes, blue like the sea that had nearly swallowed him up that summer day a year ago, he knew it was over. He began making plans.

He thought of the strange boy's words, hair like peppered brown rope against the yellow swim suit—the saltsweet taste of the sea on the girl's mouth, the sand grains on her lips and on her hands and in her hair.

That night he deleted ancient Rome and started writing the beach into his virtual program.

:fin:

A/N: _A little strange and AU. I messed around with the ages mostly in this thing. Cradle-snatching! Gasp! And Noa was a bit of a meanie. But so was Amane. Think about it though—how would you act if you'd had your own premature death hanging over your head for a few years? Well. . .I hope you liked it. I think I am probably going to revise this sometime in the future. Faust8 is coming along. Please read and review._


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